Why Should U.s. Taxpayers Pay Big Bird's Way? Same For Other Pbs And Npr Programs. Isn't It Time That Public Tv And Radio Broadcasting Go It On Their Own? If Not, Then Americans Should Ask:

Is It Public Interest Or A Public Fleecing?

February 3, 2002|By Robin Chapman, Special to the Sentinel

Government financial interest in what would otherwise be private enterprise -- also known as socialism -- has been debunked everywhere on this planet.

Socialism has been debunked everywhere on this planet -- except in places like Cuba, where nothing works at all -- and at two broadcasting entities right here in the United States. They are PBS and NPR -- The Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio.

FOR THE RECORD - ********** CORRECTION PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 17, 2002 **********Because of incorrect information supplied to the Sentinel, a commentary article about public broadcasting on the front of the Feb. 3 Insight section mistakenly described the Public Broadcasting Service, which is an affiliation of stations, and the production of one of its programs. Frontline has a staff of 35, but all its programs are produced by nonstaff contract employees. The article also misstated the size of the staff at The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, its source of video and its former name. The show has seven full-time correspondents at six locations outside Washington, D.C.; gets much of its video from Independent Television News; and formerly was known as the McNeil-Lehrer Report.*************************************************************

Together under the aegis of the government-created Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), they form the only non-commercial broadcasting entity in the United States subsidized by federal, state and local governments.

Now, in the 21st century, I seriously believe that it is time for the government to get out of the broadcasting business altogether.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which oversees PBS and NPR, was created by Congress in 1967 for the "expansion and development of public television and the diversity of its programming."

Translated, that means President Lyndon Johnson and the leaders of Congress at the time were hoping to create an alternative to the three powerful networks -- ABC, NBC and CBS.

This was during the Vietnam War, when ABC, NBC and CBS were the only real television networks in existence, and Washington felt beleaguered by the anti-war sentiment coming out of their newsrooms in New York.

The federal government's contribution to CPB began in 1969 with an appropriation of $5 million and has risen to $340 million in fiscal year 2001. Yet even that sum is only about 11 percent of the dollars needed to finance PBS and NPR.

State and local governments contribute another 26 percent of the funding. The rest comes from corporate and foundation funding and membership support. This puts public broadcasting in the difficult position of being dependent upon government funding to exist, but required to go out and find the other 63 percent of its budget from other so called "non-commercial" sources in order to survive.

Today, the reason PBS, NPR and CPB were created no longer exists. There is so much diversity on television now that a viewer can hardly take it all in. The free market created it.

The "alternative" that the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 sought to establish can now be found on the hundreds of cable or satellite channels available to consumers. And that's just one of the reasons a change would be better for viewers, listeners and for PBS and NPR.

I don't know if you tried to watch much public television recently, but if you had, this is what you would have seen during most of August.

Public television did not air its regularly scheduled shows because it was holding a fund-raising drive, which featured infomercials by self-help gurus (these are inexpensive shows to produce because the self-help guys want to sell their books) along with a few dog-eared musical and dramatic specials -- including the endlessly-repeated Anne of Green Gables saga.

During much of September, regular programming was bumped for the annual "Antique Auction" -- another fundraiser. During October, there was a brief break for regular programming, and, then in November and December, the fund-raising shows began again.

Instead of the Public Broadcasting System, it ought to be called the Perennially Begging System. At least on the other television channels, the commercials can be entertaining.

Letting PBS and NPR go commercial would also serve to improve the programming in a couple of other ways. First, the public network and its local affiliates could pay more competitive wages and, thus, might be able to retain their most talented employees.

At present, many PBS stations depend upon part-timers, free-lancers and underpaid believers in the public broadcasting ethos. Cokie Roberts began her career at National Public Radio, but now serves only as a contributor because of her more lucrative contract with ABC News.

Secondly a change would allow PBS to have the dollars to compete for better programming. It can rarely do this anymore in the present marketplace, and it explains why A&E has surpassed PBS with series such as Biography and with specials such as Pride and Prejudice, Horatio Hornblower and Longitude -- just the kinds of programming which was once the purview of PBS. I suspect few viewers know that a program such as Frontline (produced by PBS affiliate WGBH in Boston) exists with almost no staff at all. All of its programs are purchased from outside production companies.

The truth is that, because of the strange amalgam of funding sources on which CPB must depend, there are a lot of things its networks can't afford. I often run into people who tell me (when they want to deprecate the quality of local or network news) that they only watch The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS.